I tend to find intertextuality of this sort amusing and interesting because it challenges the reader to find the similarities as well as the differences between the two texts and to identify the references to the original which appear in the newer novel. The fact that Heath is drawing on Oliver Twist wasn't immediately apparent, but it gradually became more so, until eventually inescapable proof of the connection was provided by the novel the heroine (Lady Catherine Mabry) has chosen to read to her dying father: "With a sigh, she sat back and lifted a book from the bedside table. 'Let's see what sort of trouble Oliver and the Artful Dodger are going to get into today, shall we?' " (47). The novel is mentioned again at various points in the novel, including when Catherine also "told her father the tale of the Earl of Claybourne. He'd seemed as entertained by the story as he was by Oliver Twist" (339). Finally, on her wedding day, Catherine learns that Lucian's full name is Lucian Oliver Langdon:

Oliver.Holding his gaze as he gave her his vows, she wondered how much of his youth was contained in the words of the story that she'd recently read to her father. It seemed improbable, but not impossible. But it was a puzzle for another day. (365-66)

Within her novel Heath thus toys with the concept of reversing the direction of the source of inspiration. She proposes that the story of her own fictional character (based on Dickens's Oliver) may have been the inspiration for Oliver Twist. In fact, it is thought that Dickens may have based his Oliver on the real-life Robert Blincoe.

In addition to borrowing from Dickens to create her hero's backstory, Heath also pays homage to Dickens's work in the choice of names she gives her characters. Fagin is transformed into "Feagan, the kidsman who managed our rather notorious den of child thieves" (2) and Jack Dawkins, the Artful Dodger, becomes Jack Dodger:

"Dodger." In their youth, he'd been Dodger more often than Jack. He'd been skilled at dodging the hands that wanted to grab him when the target realized his pockets were being picked. (91)

In the tradition of Restoration Comedy and Henry Fielding, Dickens fits his characters with appropriate names. Oliver himself, although "badged and ticketed" as a lowly orphan and named according to an alphabetical system is, in fact, "all of a twist."[...] Toby Crackit’s is a reference to his chosen profession–housebreaking.

Other children in the gang Lucian belonged to derived their names from their professions: Dr William Graves spent his "youth as a grave robber" (207), Inspector James Swindler is so-called because "When I was young and in search of a name, it seemed appropriate" (182) and Lucian himself was known as "Luke Locke. I was very skilled at picking locks. Most of us were orphans, didn't know our real names anyway. But even for those who did, Feagan always insisted on changing their names. When they came to him, they started life anew" (262). For her part Frannie is "Frannie Darling because that's how Feagan referred to me. 'Frannie, darling, rub my feet.' 'Frannie, darling, fetch me a cuppa gin.' And so when your grandfather asked me my name, I said Frannie Darling" (52-53).

Lucian, unlike Oliver, never spends any time in the workhouse but Heath does include a reworked version of the famous scene in which Oliver asks for more food. Here it's Lucian, Earl of Claybourne, who's offering food while another little boy asks for more:

"Did you know they have lemonade, pastries, and lollipops over there? Would you like to buy some for you and your mum?" Claybourne asked.Whit nodded enthusiastically, his weariness suddenly cured."Hold out your hand," Claybourne ordered.Whit did."Fold it up." Claybourne demonstrated, closing his hand into a fist. Then he snapped his fingers. "Open your hand."The boy did, his eyes growing wide at the ha'penny resting on his palm. [...]He turned back to Whit. "Close your hand around the coin and say 'Please, sir, may I have more?'"Whit closed his hand around the coin. "Please, sir, may I have more?"Claybourne snapped his fingers. Whit opened his hand, his eyes wider than before. The ha'penny was gone. A sixpence rested on his palm. (219-220)1

Dodger's life-story is also altered. Catherine says of Dickens's Dodger that: "My heart did go out to the Artful Dodger, though. I was sorry he was transported. I hear it's a very harsh life, although I suspect there are those who deserve it" (340). Heath's heart seems to have gone out to the Artful Dodger too, and so instead of having him transported, she allows him to become a successful businessman who is the hero of Between the Devil and Desire, which is the sequel to In Bed with the Devil.

Some of the social themes of Dickens's work also reappear, in a somewhat modified form, in Heath's. Here are Catherine and Lucian discussing Dickens's work:

"I've been reading Oliver Twist to my father. It's the story -""I've read it.""Did Dickens have the right of it?""He painted a very accurate portrait of life in the rookeries, yes." (162)

Heath continues the social critique present in Dickens's novel by having Lucian demonstrate concern about the treatment of young criminals. He's written to The Times: "what I argued in my letter was that children, even if over the age of seven, should not be held accountable for understanding the law and, therefore, shouldn't be punished as though they had the reasoning power of an adult" (163).

Lucian also explains that these children have not been "taught what is right and what is wrong" (163). He then admits that "I knew better. I don't know how I knew, but I did" (164). This is, of course, explicable if he really is the Earl of Claybourne and had been taught right from wrong by his parents before their deaths. Dickens's Oliver also has different moral values from his companions, but the reader was perhaps supposed to ascribe this to some innate genetic qualities:

Oliver [...], who has an air of refinement remarkable for a workhouse boy, proves to be of gentle birth. Although he has been abused and neglected all his life, he recoils, aghast, at the idea of victimizing anyone else.This apparently hereditary gentlemanliness makes Oliver Twist something of a changeling tale, not just an indictment of social injustice. (Wikipedia)

Another issue which is touched on in Dickens's novel is domestic violence. Sikes murders his girlfriend, Nancy. It is this issue rather than that of social justice which provides the driving force of Heath's novel. Interestingly,

The marks of domestic violence were not invisible in one crucial sphere of mid-nineteenth-century discourse. Stories, novels, and essays proliferate that relate incidents of violence against working-class women, prostitutes, and "fallen women," whether publicly in the streets, or domestically in their squalid homes [...]. Locating violence against women in the poor and working classes seems to have been an attempt by bourgeois society to quarantine the pestilence of violence to the "lower orders." (Lawson and Shakinovsky 8)

and

Descriptions such as "helpless women," and "woefully unwomanly, slatternly, coarse," indicate that the writers expect their bourgeois readers to recognize the victim "type" but not themselves to identify with her misfortune.This discourse is quite naturally carried over to fictional representations of poor and working-class women's bodies [...]. For instance, Sikes's murder of Nancy in Dickens's Oliver Twist, grotesque and horrific as it is, is true to the "type" bourgeois readers are to expect from such degraded characters. (Lawson and Shakinovsky 9)

Heath, by contrast, locates domestic violence at the heart of a relationship between two people at the very top of the social hierarchy. The Duke of Avendale beats Winnie, his wife and Catherine's friend:

Tears rolled from Winnie's eyes. "Oh, Catherine, sometimes he terrifies me so. They say his first wife was clumsy and fell down the stairs. And his second slipped in the bedchamber and banged her head so hard on the floor that it killed her. I knew these tales, but I didn't doubt the veracity of them, not until after I was wed. He is so charming when he is not angry. Oh, but when he is displeased, he is most frightening." (42-43)

This suggests, correctly, that domestic violence is not solely an issue for the poor and the working classes, but is also one which can affect families from all parts of society. It also ensures that, although London has changed very considerably since Dickens's day, Heath's novel, though set in the same period, highlights an issue which is of relevance today.--------

Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:

"Please, sir, I want some more."

The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.

"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.

"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."

The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.

The photo of the cover of Oliver Twist is from Wikimedia Commons. The word "dickens", which I capitalised in my title so that it also referred to the author, is "used to express annoyance or surprise when asking questions: what the dickens is going on?" and was originally "a euphemism for 'devil'" (Compact Oxford English Dictionary).

17 comments:

I've been working on this post for my blog for about two weeks. The reason it is taking me so long is because I am attempting a brief proposal of a story-type classification system for Romance, somewhat like the Aarne-Thompson one that is used for fairy tales.

My idea was that I wanted to start shelving my own books according to tale type and tale allusion. I found the connection between Heath's book and Dickens' very interesting and have decided that they would need to be next to each other on the bookshelf.

People wonder why I don't just try shelving the books by author like every other person in the universe, but wouldn't it be lovely to go the shelf or the catalog at the library and browse fiction knowing that all the similar sorts of stories were together? I think it would be very useful for inter-textual studies.

I am attempting a brief proposal of a story-type classification system for Romance, somewhat like the Aarne-Thompson one that is used for fairy tales.

That sounds as though it could be quite ambitious. Would you suggest a classification system based around plot types, such as secret babies, marriages of convenience etc? There don't seem to be quite as many missing heirs nowadays as there used to be but I suppose Oliver Twist's one, so this novel would probably fall into that category.

wouldn't it be lovely to go the shelf or the catalog at the library and browse fiction knowing that all the similar sorts of stories were together? I think it would be very useful for inter-textual studies.

It might be easier with ebooks, as it would be possible to attach different tags to each books (e.g. author, genre, sub-genre, motifs) and then each reader could just focus on the books with the tags they're interested in.

That sounds as though it could be quite ambitious. Would you suggest a classification system based around plot types, such as secret babies, marriages of convenience etc? There don't seem to be quite as many missing heirs nowadays as there used to be but I suppose Oliver Twist's one, so this novel would probably fall into that category.

Oh I'm completely insane. This might become a lifelong obsession. When I die, my heirs will go through my multitude of books and wonder and the eccentric way I was storing them.

I was conceiving that the whole tale-type/allusion thing would have to extend out from romance, especially as there are so many books that are secret romances but they are old or literary so nobody suspects. But I would certainly start the project with secret babies and marriages of convenience.

It might be easier with ebooks, as it would be possible to attach different tags to each books (e.g. author, genre, sub-genre, motifs) and then each reader could just focus on the books with the tags they're interested in.

True, but librarians have to do all that cataloging with physical books anyway so I imagine that the

I see what you mean. I was thinking more about the physical shelving of the books being an issue if the librarians wanted to shelve by subject and author (e.g. the Library of Congress system) and also according to your classification system.

You'd probably also need to make the new classification system somewhat secret, or some people would complain about spoilers! ;-)

Willaful, your post sent me off to search out my copy of The Proposition. I see what you mean. To save other people having to rush off in search of their copies of the novel, here's the bit in question:

she came home from London, having gone to discuss and deliver a copy of her paper on Cockney speech to a playwright who was researching the concept for a play based on the myth of Pygmalion. (351)

This is a bit different from the Heath example, I think, because Ivory's character is only said to be inspiring Shaw's work in the specific area of linguistics (although the story told in Ivory's novel has a Pygmalion theme which clearly derives from Shaw's play). The reason I find it annoying is the massive difference between how Ivory deals with class and how Shaw does. I'd probably need another post to go into that. Hmm. Maybe I will write another post about that... sometime...

Sorry, I should have written "phonetics" not "linguistics." It's probably worth bearing in mind that Shaw, unlike Dickens, states quite explicitly who his source of inspiration was in this area:

When I became interested in the subject towards the end of the eighteen-seventies, Melville Bell was dead; but Alexander J. Ellis was still a living patriarch, with an impressive head always covered by a velvet skull cap, for which he would apologize to public meetings in a very courtly manner. He and Tito Pagliardini, another phonetic veteran, were men whom it was impossible to dislike. Henry Sweet, then a young man, lacked their sweetness of character (from the Preface to Pygmalion)

and "Pygmalion Higgins is not a portrait of Sweet, to whom the adventure of Eliza Doolittle would have been impossible; still, as will be seen, there are touches of Sweet in the play." (9)

Okay, you scholars--"Dickens fits his characters with appropriate names. . ." I finally read Oliver Twist last year by listening to it (all of it) on CD in the car. And I have to confess I smirked each time I heard the name "Master Bates." Dickens didn't really mean that, did he? Or is my mind just dirtier than the average? (as befits my profession, LOL)

I think the people it would really cause a lot more trouble for would be the overworked librarians who'd have to do extra cataloging. Unless it disturbed the usual shelving arrangements, I don't think it would cause any difficulties for scholars if there were a few more classification categories listed at the front of books.

Or is my mind just dirtier than the average?

I doubt it, because other people have mentioned this. William A. Cohen's 1996 Sex Scandal: The Private Parts of Victorian Fictionseems to have caused controversy:

one should remember the whiff of scandal more traditionally-minded scholars have detected in Cohen's claim that Great Expectations, an exemplar of canonical coming-of-age stories beloved by many, has at its heart numerous meditations on male masturbation. Dickens is of course the author who, in Oliver Twist, named one of his characters Master Bates. Such a reference is rather hard to miss.

According to one review of Thomas W. Laqueur's 2003 Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation

The first two chapters of Solitary Sex cover Onania and its eighteenth-century cultural context, along with masturbation and its history. This involves the worlds of publishing and quack medicine in eighteenth-century London, the spread of attention to onanism from England through Europe, the range of anti-masturbation cures and treatments, and a flurry of literary and philosophical representations of masturbation and masturbators: Rousseau's Émile, Kant's pronouncement that masturbation is worse than suicide, the onanism of Keats's poetry (according to Byron), Dickens's "Charley Bates, Master Charles Bates, Master Bates" (Oliver Twist).

One of the odd minor characters in Oliver Twist is named Charley Bates. At certain points--usually when he is being especially boisterous--he is named Master Bates. Dickens thereby engages with the popular nineteenth-century discourse that claimed that masturbation led to physical deformity, depravity, and criminality. Dickens also elaborates here on a theme running throughout the novel, namely, that sex = death. Master Bates pantomimes hanging and the moment of death. In terms of the larger discourse of masturbation this makes sense in that masturbation is a form of non-procreative sexuality. It is simply a death of the self rather than a propagation of the self. It leads to the eventual decay of the self. In terms of the novel specifically, it is clear that any sexuality not sanctioned by society leads to death. This is confirmed in the deaths of Oliver's mother and Nancy. Thus Master Bates's pantomime becomes an emblem for the novel in general.

Laura Vivanco, you are just completely awesome. That is fascinating stuff, and opened a new window into the novel--and its depiction of women--for me. It's a curious novel, so vivid and richly imagined, and yet Oliver consistently strikes me as one-dimensional, almost a plot place-holder instead of a Real Boy. Obviously I should have studied Dickens in college, but at that point I was much more into Forster, Lawrence, Conrad, Waugh, etc. Also at that time in my life quite unacquainted with sex, which probably hampered my understanding of many subtleties of literature, LOL!

Much as I delight in being thought of as awesome, I do feel compelled to point out that if you hadn't asked me about Master Bates, I wouldn't have gone off and looked this up. I'm sure that by blogging at TMT and reading the comments other people make, I learn just as much, if not more, than any of the blog's readers. I benefit a lot from the "awesome" commenters who ask me interesting questions and make comments which get me thinking about things in new ways.

I didn't study any English literature at university at all. The system's different in Scotland from in the US, and I have the impression that we study far fewer subjects at university level, but do each one in more detail. And I have the feeling that under the English system students specialise even earlier.

Getting back to Oliver Twist and masturbation, the impression I got from that first quote was that this may very well be the kind of theory which some academics didn't (and perhaps still don't) agree with.

Still, Cohen does seem to me to have some evidence to support his argument, at least as far as I can tell from reading a short excerpt from one 1993 article:

When he first appears, for instance, he is described as "a very sprightly young friend . . . who was now formally introduced to |Oliver~ as Charley Bates." Further down on the page, he is referred to as "Mr. Charles Bates." Finally, he delivers the gear for cleaning up whatever mess his name might imply: "'Wipes,' replied Master Bates; at the same time producing four pocket-handkerchiefs."(3)

The peculiar attention to the young scoundrel's name is dramatically amplified by the following exchange

‘I am,’ replied the Doger. ‘I’d scorn to be anything else.’ Mr. Dawkins gave his hat a ferocious cock, after delivering this sentiment, and looked at Master Bates, as if to denote that he would feel obliged by his saying anything to the contrary.

Cohen then continues:

Through this, one of the many scenes depicting Oliver's initiation into the secret community of male adolescence, the term "prig" floats with as much instability as that of "Master Bates." The gloss on "prig" that Oliver is incapable of uttering is presumably "thief," yet the persistence with which the term goes undenoted throws us deliberately back upon the signifier -- where, with the alacrity of any English schoolboy, we might take the usual phonemic detour from a bilabial to a fricative and detect a "frig" (Victorian slang for manual stimulation of the genitals). If the revelation that Master Bates himself is a "prig" merely establishes a relation of synonymity, the Dodger nonetheless asserts superiority over the smaller boys with his "ferocious cock."

Gail Turley Houston, in her article "Broadsides at the Board: Collations of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 31.4 (1991): 735-755 suggests that there may be another masturbating character in the novel, namely Monks, Oliver's half-brother. She thinks that "the 'hideous disease' of his face" (750)

intimates that Monks may carry a sexually transmitted disease, or at the least, in good Victorian moralistic fashion, that he has acne because he masturbates. Dickens's own private joke - so private it may be unconscious - connects sexual sin with the criminal: as Edward Le Comte has pointed out, in a Freudian autoerotic slip of the tongue, the narrator repeatedly refers to Charley Bates as Master Bates. See Le Comte's Afterword to Oliver Twist (New York: Signet, 1961), p.483. (754-55)

I have encountered the argument that Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies was intended as a tract against masturbation. Having never read the complete book, I cannot comment one way or another.

I shouldn't really comment either, since if I've read it it was either so long ago I can't remember or in an abridged version, but that's not going to stop me observing that if that is the point of the novel, then "Mrs Do-as-you-would-be-done-by" and "Mrs Be-done-by-as-you-did" begin to sound, respectively, like more of an encouragement and a promise than an admonishment or a threat.

a BookWyrm, a dragon who has a library for a hoard.

I first came across one of them in Lackey's earlier book in the series, One Good Knight. It sounds like a lovely kind of dragon.

If you look at the Wikipedia entry on THE WATER-BABIES, you'll find no mention of masturbation and some very different interpretations.

Incidentally, I remember coming across somewhere a quotation indicating that Kingsley said "Religion is the opiate of the people" before Marx did; but I've been unable to find it again. He was a reformer who thought religion should try to help people in this life rather than assure them that they will be rewarded for their sufferings in the sweet bye-and-bye.

Yes, the Snow Queen's is an undersized golden one called Citrine. We get to see her actually working as a librarian.

Have you read the whole series? I've liked them all. FORTUNE'S FOOL has a Russian setting, with Baba Yaga, rusalka, the seventh son of a seventh son, and the Sea-King's seventh daughter.

THE SNOW QUEEN is a different take on the fairy tale; she's a Godmother with the job of reforming selfish people like Kay and overly devoted people like Gerda. Her life is actually boring until she winds up going on a quest for an evil witch impersonating her. Background is Finnish.

"Within her novel Heath thus toys with the concept of reversing the direction of the source of inspiration."

I sometimes enjoy that way of meshing the story with the historical time, but yes, it can be twee. Sophie Gee's The Scandal of the Season was a fairly successful fictionalization of the true inspiration for a literary work, though the romance was rather stilted. I loved Elizabeth Hand's Mortal Love, which imagined a fantastical inspiration for the pre-Raphaelite painters. On the other hand, I was a little impatient with the name-dropping when Katherine O'Neal's Just For Her mentioned Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso, and other historical figures; I forget which of them was inspired by the hero's exploits.

"Laura, that's all we need--a library in which the books are classified by a secret code!"

That sounds delightfully Umberto Eco'ian :) The Name of the Rose is all about knowledge being dangerous; best make the cataloguing system as impenetrable as possible.